Plankton

Well, thank you. I immersed myself into the guitar scene many moons ago, and diligently sought out and emulated many of the greats, which is where a lot of my instinctual musical knowledge comes from. That, and spending countless hours in front of a TV, or radio playing along with whatever comes out of the speakers. I've learned, and then forgotten, hundreds, if not thousands of songs in 3-5 minutes, only to have them pushed into the back of my memory in the same sitting. I can recall some of what I figured out at times, but the fact that I even played through it at all is still a benefit in itself.

Maybe when I retire, I'll finally sit down and learn the fundamentals of theory and kind of 'connect the dots' so to speak. Then I'll go find me a pretentious jazz nerd and put him to the test.

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Chula Vista

I use to do that all the time. It's such an excellent learning tool. To this day I can pretty competently play along to any style of music with the only real exceptions being hard core bebop and chicken picking country.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Plankton

Ugh. Thats a rough one. Zakk Wylde (along with all the other greats like Roy Clark, Buck Owens, etc.) blew me away when I first heard "Farm Fiddlin".

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EPOCH6

I've been trying to learn chicken picking since I got my new telecaster. So brutal, especially after spending your whole musical life addicted to the pick.

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Carpe Mortem

I'd say the primary difference is that self-taught musicians have to obviously push themselves. Nobody's doing it for them, and that kind of motivation outlives what might be instilled by a tutor. It can be difficult to stay focused on the hobby if you don't have an established environment to engage in it.

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Moss

Danny Gatton is a master of that. They don't call him the humbler for nothing. It's just a matter of using pick and fingers:

Machine

I took lessons for about three and a half years for guitar, and I think that I wouldnt be anywhere near where I am now, and probably wouldn't even know where to start with songwriting. The way my lessons would always go would be, I'd pick up a song show it to my teacher and we'd learn it together. Usually between songs he'd teach me techniques and scales and I'd slowly progress on those. Eventually I got to the point where he'd show me a scale, play some chords and I would improv over it for the full half an hour switching off with my teacher. At the end I was learning jazz, and that really got me ready for playing for jazz band and being able to think a lot quicker on my feet, so even if I didn't fully form the chord I could manage, and my improvising had come a long way. Right now I'm taking a really extended break, but I hope to get back into it soon.

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boost my ego

listen to me stroke my delay pedal

ever wanted to hear death grips songs... but they're acoustic? me neither.

Chula Vista

Ever checked out Albert Lee?

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Lord Larehip

I don't understand. Why a dozen or more? The mode you play in jazz is the mode you play whether you're soloing, dueting, trio, quartet, etc. Doesn't matter how many people there are. And, yes, jazz musicians make great use of modes in every possible way. D Dorian, for example, is very common. Miles Davis's "So What" requires the bass to play D Dorian. It's a minor mode but it's NOT a minor scale and that's a very important distinction. So if you're playing a piece and the leader tells you, "It's D Dorian." You have to know what that means. You start playing in D minor and you're going to be sent home because you'll be playing out of tune. Even a mediocre jazz musician knows how to play D Dorian.

That is simply not true. If you write your ideas down, you SEE it and it inspires enhancing the melody and fleshing it out. When you write with a guitar on your lap trying to come up with something and you find yourself making the same predictable chord changes, try writing it down and looking at those notes and all sorts of ideas start flowing. But you have to know your scales, chords and modes.

What about actually PLAYING the music rather than discussing it with a bunch of pretentious music students (which you will NEVER find at a jazz gig)? I can play by ear AND off the sheet. When you can write it down or read it off the sheet, it ADDS a dimension to you musical vocabulary. It's absurd to think it would detract. That's like saying knowing differential calculus hurts structural engineers more than it helps. It may be beyond the intellectual grasp of hacks but it is essential to an engineer. I wouldn't dare drive over a bridge built by an engineer who didn't have his theory down.

Carpe Mortem

Re: the actual education and its relation to musical prowess. Playing something 'perfectly' according to the tabs or sheet (or writing your own) versus free-handing, is gonna be really awesome and well done but lack the mistakes giving music character. Many great sounds in individual tracks were originally mistakes. I ultimately lean towards self-taught as superior.

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